Removal of Foreign National Offenders and EU Prisoners

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point, which is that behind the figures we exchange across the House lie the lives of people who have been seriously affected by the impact of criminality. Such an impact occurs whatever the identity of the criminals, but there are cases such as the one to which she referred. Our hearts must go out to Elsie given the fact that, as the hon. Lady said, she lives day to day with the impact of the actions of a foreign national offender.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The number of foreign national offenders deported at the end of their sentence reflects the efficient way in which my right hon. Friend has run her Department, and she is to be congratulated on that. The difficult challenge is getting sentenced prisoners from the EU to return to their country to serve their sentence under the EU prisoner transfer framework decision, which was negotiated by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) when we were at the Ministry of Justice, where I was his junior Minister, responsible for prisons. It is four years since we departed from the MOJ; how many people have actually been deported to serve their sentence in other EU countries since then?